head to head · open source
portainer vs task
portainer has 38,523 GitHub stars, 2,907 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. task has 16,158 stars, 910 forks, 190 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 138% (38,523 vs 16,158 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; task is written in Go under MIT. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, task 6%. portainer was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| portainer | task | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 16K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 910 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick portainer if
- You weight community size — 39K stars and counting
- You want the Zlib license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick task if
- You want the task feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and task fits your workflow better
About portainer
Portainer Community Edition is a free, lightweight container management UI for Docker, Swarm, Podman, Kubernetes, and ACI environments, distributed under the zlib licence and aimed at homelab operators, hobbyists, students, and anyone experimenting with containers on their own hardware.
read the full portainer overview →
About task
Task is a fast, cross platform task runner and build tool, written in Go and inspired by Make, for developers and DevOps engineers who want to define and run project commands without maintaining a hand written Makefile.
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or task more popular?
portainer has 38,523 GitHub stars and task has 16,158. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and task free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and task under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and task?
portainer is written in TypeScript and task in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, portainer or task?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,523 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose task if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.